Hi I am new to this and basically need someone to talk to for advice. I am 48 years old, I had a first marriage which produced 3 beautiful children and that relationship lasted 20 years. After that I met another girl which although lasted for nearly 2 years, I new that it wasn’t the relationship I wanted, prior to splitting up she got pregnant with my baby. I decided to try and make it work but my heart was not in it. After that unexpectedly I met a wonderful girl with whom I fell in love with, my job took me overseas and she decided to come with me. Within 6 months I asked her to marry me and within a year we were married. She is 29 years old and we have now been married for nearly 3 years.
During the period of our marriage we have had numerous arguments that have led both of us to threatening to leave the marriage. My wife argues in a way that personally attacks me and through out my life I have never experiences this type of attack, when I receive these attacks I seem to loose it and respond badly and after a period of time I even started responding with similar attacks. It seemed that if I do the smallest thing wrong ends up in a violent argument, resulting in me walking on egg shells waiting for the next one. When we make up we realize that the arguments were about nothing, but didn’t stop the next one. We both have left the house and come back until the time in October when I left and went to a hotel. During that time (4 days or so) I got very depressed, crying at work and I could not cope, I went home and drank in an effort to medicate myself every night. Until that Saturday night we had an argument over the mobile phone via txt which ended up with my wife saying “goodbye my lover goodbye my friend”, after reading this I fell into deep depression and got very, very drunk. So much so that I ended up somewhere with a prostitute, this has never happened to me before, in fact I have been told how trustworthy I am, even still by my ex-wife. I deeply regret this act and know that it is not in my character, however, I did do it, and take full responsibility for it. I realized what I was doing at the time and left immediately however I believe it all went to far as I am unable to remember much of the detail. I knew that I had to do something with my marriage and work hard and in doing so be honest with my wife, so I asked if we could try and work on the marriage, she agree to meet and I told her I wanted to work on it, I then told her what happened and then all ****** broke loose. Even though she was angry and hurt she was concerned for me in regards to disease etc and insisted to accompany me to the doctors to get checked.
We both recognized that Alcohol played a part in our arguments and my wife suggested that she went away for a couple of weeks to relax and stop drinking, I supported this and it lasted 1 week, she then asked me to join her, I decided to fly over a day earlier only to find her drunk in her hotel room and another argument started. I spent the next few days with her and then we returned home. After seeing a counsellor they suggested that she go into rehab, which we both agreed. I supported her through this period in which she realized that she was indeed an alcoholic. I joined her for the last week where we had marital counselling which did not go to well. We both returned home for Xmas and she decided not to come back overseas with me, as I still had 6 months left on my contract, she wanted to stay home with family and friends to recover and requested that I give her a min of 6 months. During that time she would have strength to work on our marriage in the way that it deserved. I understood, agreed, and returned overseas. I have been overseas now working at my job and looking after her business for 3 months, she has been doing yoga, AA, tennis seeing friends and relative etc. Her recovery is going really well. However during this time she has said that she didn’t know wether she wanted to work on our marriage or not, stating that I come with a lot of baggage, 4 children and 2 ex partners and what I did to her, resulting in me being very anxious and depressed.
I keep on saying to her that if she decides that she wants to start working it out then I will return immediately, I also promised her I would give her a min of 6 months as per her request. It seem after 3 months we are starting to disconnect, although I am sending her roses every week and txt her messages of love every day, together with e-mails expressing my commitment and love for her she rarely replies, in fact she never instigates any messages of love herself. She still says that she loves me and when I return we will work on our marriage, go to counselling however in the back of my mind I think she may be just saying this as a matter of process. If I ask her direct questions like,” do you want me to come back earlier?” she responds with “you need to make your own decisions”. I explain to her that I do make my own decisions but I require information to make these decision on. During the last 3 months I have read a lot of self help marriage counselling web sites, bought a great book” good husband great marriage” and believe I understand a number of my own issues within the relationship, I want to work on them with her, however I think that if I wait for 6 month it may be too late. I believe that a lot of her unexplained anger may have been the result of the alcohol, but I do not know this until we try again, if I come back early she has already said that we would have to have a formal separation, what should I do?

Any ideas or questions so that I can elaborate further.

Welcome. Do you know that she is not drinking? It sounds like she might just have wanted to get you safely out of the way so she can continue to drink.

No, one thing I believe in is her honesty, she made a big deal about her reaching 90 day sobriety and she even hosts some of the AA meetings, I really respect her achievements in this area and this gives me some form of comfort, at least something good has come out of all this. I also want to add that we have only been together 7 weeks in the last 6 months, it is really hard to understand where we are up to.

Do you mind if I ask what happened with your first marriage? Sounds like things have been going downhill since then.

I am a business man, and all my life I have been working to establish a future for my wife and children. My original marriage failed due to the two of us growing apart, I concentrated on the business and she concentrated on the children. At the time we both accepted the fact that we had grown apart and the marriage ended equitably, the children are great and I spend better quality time with them than when I was married.
After the divorce I realized that financial benefit did not equal emotional benefit and I made a conscious effort to change, which I believe I have done. However I still work for the future and have always tried to give my current wife what I neglected to give my previous wife, affection, love and understanding. I have learnt recently,I may not have shown them in a way in which she recognises them. I wanted to save $$ to start a family with her and be in a position to devote a lot of time to her and the children. She claimes all I think about is money, I see money as a tool not the result, I believe in this marriage I have balance the need to save with enjoying life, we have travelled together to many countries and I have given her a nice life style, she has also said that I do not staisfy her emotional needs, this came up in counciling however we have not had a chance to work on these issues due to the current situaion.